Reporting on Fusion 2014 and Concur’s Impressive T&E Solution [Plus+]

Concur – the company best known for its travel and expense reporting solution – is moving along with its annual user conference this week. The approximate 4,000 headcount organization has a fairly substantial number of employees in India – which explains why revenues aren’t already at the $1-billion mark, a number they expect to see in 2016. The company is growing extremely aggressively, both through acquisitions and hiring. Since last year’s Fusion event they have acquired GDSX and TRX – which explains how Concur has managed to add around 1,500 employees in one year’s time. That is rapid growth!

The mantra at this event was “Transparent, Connected, Effortless” – words echoed consistently by the many product management, marketing, and business development executives that I met. It’s not just something in the water in the Seattle area that has created this uniform pitch; the entire solution delivery is built on transparency (e.g. spend, budget, travel plan changes, expenses, credit card alerts, policy infractions, and so on), and connectivity across a partner network (a long list of partners ranging from financial service institutions to travel management firms to rental cars, hotel chains, and other suppliers) and all of it at your fingertips, in other words effortlessly available.

The effortlessness deserves a special comment. Concur has truly delivered a great user experience in their solutions. It is clear from the solution features, options, workflow, and general proactivity that they really know their use case. (Note to self: must persuade Jason Busch to switch our T&E reporting to Concur). Those who have read some of my other solution evaluations know that I can be relentlessly demanding or, as Jason calls me, a curmudgeon. That said, I have nothing but praise for Concur in the design department – is it weird to say that it actually looks fun to do expense reporting with their ExpenseIt tool?

A Spend Matters Plus subscription is required to read the rest of this article. Analyst Thomas Kase goes on to cover the details of the solution and Concur’s plans and potential for future growth. To inquire about a free trial to Spend Matters Plus, please contact Sheena Smith (ssmith@spendmatters.com).